Don’t Watch Cable News

gupta glassesIf you want to get scared keep cable news on all day. That’s my takeaway from a couple of days of doing just that! I’ve got the eebie jeebies over Ebola, or as it’s called in the Fox house, “The Ebola.”

That two health care professionals in bunny suits got infected seems totally Michael Crichton. Plausible fiction. But it’s real.

From here it looks like health care professionals were treating it too lightly. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, allegedly on voluntary quarantine, was ratted out for driving around her home in Princeton, NJ. Her quarantine is now mandatory.

And, as Crichton would have probably fictionalized for added drama, one of the two Ebola stricken nurses took two flights on jam-packed airliners. They’re petri dishes in the sky already. This is insult to injury.

I’m not an immunologist. I’m not a doctor. Take what I say with that admission.

We should have already figured out a cure. Maybe we already have in ZMapp–if there were any available.

Ebola is a nearly perfect disease to fight with genetically engineered drugs. Some people fight it off. Their blood has the answers.

ZMapp hasn’t been run through all the tests to be approved. It works flawlessly in monkeys. Human trials must be completed. Drugs have unforeseen side effects.

Beyond that, ZMapp takes time to produce. The drug is infused in growing tobacco leaves in a process is called “pharming.” This limits mass production.

This should have been done years ago, but it’s easy to not prepare for rare events.

Pandemics can happen. The last was the flu in 1918.

It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world’s population—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. – Wikipedia

Today I worry about Ebola like I worry about a plane crash or car crash. All are possibilities, but remote.

In a week my opinion might change.

5 thoughts on “Don’t Watch Cable News”

  1. One of the reasons I got out of journalism as a career is that in the quest for ratings and viewers the media manages to scare the hell out of people about things they really have little to worry about.
    My mom and I lived next to a pair of elderly sisters who locked their doors every night at 8 pm and kept their doors closed and locked (even on the hottest days…..and they didn’t use a/c) all night. Why? They were afraid someone would break in. They also used to wash off the clothes line with hot soapy water because ‘Birds sit on them.’
    Peoiple are convinced that if they don’t carry a gun with them 24/7 that they’ll be the victim of some random crime. You’re actually more likely to be hit by a drunk driver or trampled to death by cows than to be attacked by a gunman in the shoe department of Walmart. Come on!
    We had a customer at work who came in and while he was at the counter started coughing. He looked up and said ‘I have Ebola’. Not funny but not unexpected really.
    I remember a few years ago the insanity over ‘bird flu’ and how the ‘epidemic is coming’. Never showed up. Same for ‘swine flu’. Everyone was panicked about them. But more people die of REGULAR flu every year and no one panics about that. What about Legionnaires Disease? You hardly hear about it any more. Kills a lot of people each year (mostly elderly people in nursing homes).
    Seems to me we have other things to worry about. When Ebola hits CT I’ll think about it.

  2. Well, 793tango, with one of the two Yale students who went to Liberia, never went into a clinical setting now being checked for Ebola-like symptoms, are you thinking about it? Sure, it’s probably something else. But I’m finding this to be rather scary. And I’m not an alarmist.

    1. Nope. Not thinking about it. Not really concerned at all. You’re still more likely to die of any number of OTHER things than Ebola. Like the flu.
      I was listening to a MA radio station the other day and one of the DJs was doing a commentary and in it he was reading from a New York Times piece about how many OTHER things are out there that can kill you that you should be MORE worried about than Ebola. The list was extensive. Wish I had a copy of it because I’d post it here. Great piece of common sense commentary.

  3. I still worry the most about Rabies. I am terrified of that one. Living in the woods I always wonder what animal might have been around my yard or will be. This ratchets up when there is a rabid animal attack anywhere in CT. Since Rabies is 100% deadly when the symptoms appear IMO it’s a lot more of a threat to me than Ebola.

    It is sounding more and more like the Dallas hospital didn’t follow the necessary protocols.

    We are probably more in danger right now from Flu, West Nile Virus, Entorvirus, Ecoli, Samonnella, Listeria, and all the other things right around us.

    Having said that, I left to run errands this a.m. worrying about a tree falling on me from all of the rain today, or skidding on slippery leaves, etc etc.

    I think we are probably more fearful of more things today than we ever were before. It is tempting to shut if all off and say “ignorance is bliss” but while it might be bliss it’s not smart.

    Kate

  4. Rather than obsess about animals that might come through your yard keep track of any reports of rabid animals. Or call your animal control officer or even the DEP. Find out if there’s been any reports in your area. If not, don’t worry so much. You can’t GET rabies unless you’ve been bitten by a rabid animal.
    Or you could move to the city where there’s fewer wild animals.

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